


The Weather Outside Is Frightful

by cenotaphy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Blizzards & Snowstorms, Caring Dean, Case Fic, Cold Weather, Dean Winchester and Feelings, Emergency Cuddling, Fantasy elements, Fluff and Angst, Hurt Castiel, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of Past Assault, Monster of the Week, Protective Dean, Sam to the Rescue, Sarcastic Castiel, Snow, Snowed In, Team Free Will, Trapped, by which I mean I straight-up made up this monster, lots of snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-11 04:45:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8954152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cenotaphy/pseuds/cenotaphy
Summary: With less than a week till Christmas, there's plenty of things Dean would far rather be doing than hunting some mysterious ice spirit. But holidays suck, he's always maintained, and the universe, apparently, does not care what he wants. So here he is, tramping through the knee-high snow, scanning the horizon for the completely-AWOL angel who's supposed to have his back.And then the wind picks up.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DeanOh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeanOh/gifts).



> The original recipient for this fic dropped out, so rather than have it be homeless, I've gifted it to the person who took on their assignment. All you pinch-hitters out there: thanks for all the good work you do!
> 
> Much thanks to my lovely beta reader [Eloise_Enchanted](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eloise_Enchanted)!

_The present_

One would think, Dean reflects resentfully, as he pauses beside the last fencepost to knock snow off his boots, that as an angel Cas would know better than to go careening off solo like this. After all, he'd spent the greater part of his angelic existence obeying orders from On High—you'd think he could follow a simple suggestion to freaking _sit tight_.

And okay, so maybe that isn't really fair to Cas, who certainly isn't Dean's to command, and who can take care of himself, and who's badass and competent and lethal and an angel and a damn force to be reckoned with. It's just—well, Cas isn't the _only_ supernatural force of nature they might be dealing with, here, and so can you blame Dean for being worried?

He sighs and trudges on, over and around the gently mounded shapes to which the snowfall has reduced the topography. He doesn't think he's ever seen a moon this bright. The sky seems almost to glow, and maybe the snow is helping, reflecting all that light back so that the whole world is lit up in sharp-edged clarity.

He's left the last silent farmhouse back in the distance, and all around him there's nothing marring the perfect colorlessness of the world, the juxtaposition of the white winter earth and black sky. His footsteps are a trail of dark smudges, like fingerprints on paper.

Except—

There's a shape smeared across the nearest snowbank, an irregular polygon a little dimmer than the white slope it's draped over, and his heart stops when he gets closer and sees that it's a coat.

***

_Earlier_

The snowstorm had whipped up suddenly, blowing through the rural town and surrounding fields like an angry spirit—which, after all, it might well have been. Some of the signs pointed to the culprit being a _yokai_ , a Japanese nature spirit, angry about something and manifesting as the sudden cold snap, the unusually high snowfall, and the two unfortunate victims.

At least, that was Sam's working theory. Dean was still in favor of a witch with a chip on her shoulder and a thing for winter spells. Cas had seemed doubtful of both theories ("this feels much more primordial than a witch, Dean") and hesitant to label whatever-it-was as malevolent ("yokai are peaceful spirits unless provoked, Sam") but that was Cas for you.

And even Cas couldn't argue with the frozen body of the man who had, until three days prior, been a member of the town council and a long-time basketball coach at the local high school. You could almost have assumed he'd simply wandered outside in one of the earlier storms and frozen to death—except for the fist-sized hole punched clean through the center of his chest. And, as the weary sheriff had informed them, the fact that every cell beneath the first few layers of the dermis had individually ruptured in a burst of now-melted ice crystals. He'd been frozen from the _inside_ out.

Interviews had been less than helpful—no clear enemies, nobody with any reason to hold a grudge. Surprising for someone involved in local government. To be fair, nobody had really seemed to _like_ the late Mr. John Laddon either, for unspecific reasons that were conveyed more through tone than through actual complaints. Off-putting personality, was all Dean could gather. Nevertheless, the man had been a respected pillar of the community, and he'd had money—not a lot, but enough that he was clearly spending his free time coaching out of preference rather than necessity.

The second victim, fourteen-year-old Luna Nakahata, hadn't yet been found, but her disappearance the previous morning had her parents nearly in tears. Her older sister Clare, home from college for the holidays, had been more subdued, placing a comforting hand on her mother's shoulder while unease flickered over her face.

It was while they'd been at the Nakahatas' house that the blizzard had sprung up. Which, frankly, might be a sign that they're on the right track.

"Maybe the witch is spooked," Dean had suggested to Sam, as Mrs. Nakahata went to make sure all the windows were securely closed.

"Why would she care if we're talking to the families?"

"Because we're getting close! Or, I don't know, maybe it _is_ a yoki—"

" _Yokai_ , Dean—"

"—and this is just a weird spirit thing."

"I dunno," Sam had said uneasily, looking around at the pristine Nakahata home, the tasteful landscape prints hung on the walls, the sports and academic trophies lining the mantelpiece. Out the windows, everything had become a dark blur, and the howling of the wind wasn't quite obscured by the soft piano and guitar notes from the stereo in the corner. "Something's not right."

And Dean had felt the same way, actually—as if they were missing some piece of the puzzle, some reason the _yokai_ (if it even was a _yokai_ ) had manifested, some reason it had targeted these two specifically. And Clare—he'd had the feeling she knew something, because she wasn't quite meeting their eyes. And hey, people change when they go to college, maybe she'd changed for the worse, maybe she'd gotten cozy with a book of witchcraft or an actual witch.

Cas had texted then— _Be careful, it's snowing heavily_.

 _Yeah thanks sherlock_ , Dean had snipped back. Then, feeling bad, he'd typed _stay safe k_ , and sent it before he could change his mind.

 _Of course_ , Cas had texted. Followed by—of all the fucking things—a penguin emoji. Whatever.

Like the other freak blizzards that had been barraging the town over the past week, this one hadn't lasted long. They'd spent an uncomfortable hour making strained small talk with the distraught parents, trying to ignore the twinkling Christmas tree set up in the corner. Christmas wasn't for another couple of days, but clearly the family had gotten started early, which had to be beyond painful for them now. Clare had disappeared into her room, and Dean figured it'd be better to come back in the morning rather than stay and stretch the family's hospitality even thinner.

Finally the storm had died away, the wind dropping into silence as quickly as it had arrived, and they'd finally been able to leave. The moon was just a day away from full, and the snow had been piled everywhere in immaculate, glittering drifts. It had taken them ten minutes to clear the Impala, and even then there was no way they were driving it home through the buried streets.

So they had dug some backup outerwear out of the far recesses of the trunk and set off on foot. The sky had stayed miraculously clear for the half-hour walk back to the motel, and the world was all kinds of beautiful, actually, Dean had thought, even if no one was texting him back and Sam was too lost in thought—eyes distant, gigantic fivehead furrowed in concentration—to make small talk.

And then, upon arrival, they'd found the door to their room swinging wide open, snow lying in white heaps on the furniture and bedcovers, and Cas nowhere to be seen.

***

_Slightly later_

The motel was at the edge of the small town, and they'd tracked Cas's phone past that edge through the snow-coated pastures and dark-windowed farmhouses beyond. The phone they found after fifteen chilly minutes, lying undamaged atop the crust of snow beside a faded wooden signpost. The screen flickered when Dean picked it up. Though the device was still steadily sending out its beacon, no angel accompanied it, nor, actually, was there any sign that anyone at all had ever passed through the immediate vicinity.

"Go that way," Dean had said quietly to Sam, nodding his head toward the leftmost path. What was left of the lettering on the signpost indicated that there was an old church a mile on.

"Are you sure we should split up?"

"We don't know which way he might have gone. Faster if we cover both directions."

"Yeah, but the witch, or the _yokai_ , or whatever it is, could still be out there—"

"We're just going to have to take that chance, okay?" He'd ignored Sam's exasperated expression. "We need to find him, Sam, we just—"

Sam had sighed. "Alright. Just keep texting, let me know what you find. Or don't find."

"Right." Dean had resolutely suppressed the faint whispers of dread inside him.

***

_Currently_

Dean straightens and looks around, turning the trench coat over in his hands. There are no footprints anywhere, except his own. The coat might as well have been air-dropped from the luminous sky.

"Cas?" he calls, without much optimism; there's no place nearby for anyone to be hiding.

Well, actually, there's a building some ways away, starkly outlined against the snow. It's perhaps a quarter of a mile away, but there's nothing obstructing the view. This was flat country, or mostly flat anyway—a few gently rolling hills, now accentuated by the uneven drifts of snow. In the very far distance he can see the dark mass of the forest, a long, low-lying streak the color of charcoal.

He starts trudging toward the structure. Some kind of barn, he guesses. The large heaps of snow dotting the field he's now crossing might be hay bales, buried during the storm. He eyes them dubiously, trying to evaluate the likelihood that one contains an angel. Don't people sometimes hide in haystacks, during blizzards? Though why Cas would need shelter, he isn't sure. It's not like the guy can freeze to death.

 _The barn first_ , he decides.

He checks his phone, texts Sam.

 _No luck at the church_ , the reply comes. _Gonna do a wider loop and then check the graveyard_.

Dean snorts, slipping the phone into his jacket pocket alongside Cas's. Great. That's just what he needs, Sam falling into an open grave or getting clocked by a literal ghost of Christmas past.

Although (not that he's going to let appearances fool him) if there was any night when he'd think all ghosts would be resting where they belonged, it'd be this one. The silence, the blazing moonlight, the soft crunch of snow underfoot—it's almost ridiculously peaceful, in sharp contrast to the growing worry about Cas that's stirring uneasily in his gut.

Something _else_ stirs, too; a faint throb of power in the air, a low hum that seems to shake the snow. Dean stumbles, though the ground hasn't moved. The hum grows louder, unbearably loud, becoming more of a roar, now, really. A jangling, crashing sound, like a thousand glasses shattering. And then, on top of it, the wind suddenly howling in his ears, loud and cold and fast in a way that he assumes must be like racing along an empty highway in the dead of winter. In Alaska. With the windows down. And the roof missing.

"The fuck?" he mutters, and then, " _Shit_ ," because what's happening might be inexplicable, but it's pretty clear that it's also dangerous. The wind is like a knife against his face, whipping up clouds of the powdery snow so that all of a sudden he can barely see. And as if all the rest of it weren't enough to clue him in to the fact that this isn't normal, the sky directly _above_ him is still clear and bright and glossy as an inkwell.

He starts to stumble forward in the direction of the barn, leaning into the wind, trying to shield his face with one arm.

He's almost made it, the dark shape of the structure looming up through the swirling snow, when the wind cuts out so suddenly that for a second he thinks he's gone half-deaf. His vision clears as the snow settles.

He looks around, fumbling for his gun, the roar of power still slamming like waves against the edge of his hearing, and sees it. Or, _her_ : The _yokai_ , the spirit, whatever—one glance is enough for him to decide that _witch_ is probably inaccurate.

The first impression that she gives is one of power—unfettered, out-of-control power. It's in everything from the silvery glow of her blank eyes to the white and whirling aureole of her hair. She's slim and a good foot shorter than he is, and although she's taken human shape, there's hoarfrost creeping down her cheeks in delicate blue-green patterns and a spiny fringe of ice crystals hanging from her jawline and the curve of her breasts.

She staggers forward, each step crashing like thunder, like an iceberg calving. Her movements are uneven and slow; her mouth judders open in soundless pants.

"What the fuck are you?" Dean snaps. "Don't come any closer!" He registers vaguely that he's gripping the gun so tightly his knuckles, previously red with cold, have gone white.

She snarls at him. If there are words, he can't distinguish them from the crunch and thunder of her movements. Her skin is bone-white, glittering with frost, and it's unraveling around her joints, coming apart at her knees and elbows in pale shredded ribbons that expose the blue pulse of muscle beneath. As she lopes toward him, snow explodes beneath her feet—huge drifts shooting up at forty-five degree angles in the wake of her heels, freezing in ragged waves behind her.

Dean grits his teeth and fires, but the bullet doesn't even seem to reach her. Her hands fly out—the fingertips black and shriveled, a sharp contrast to the rest of her skin—and a gust of freezing, ice-sprinkled wind knocks him backwards. He goes staggering through the snow, barely keeping his footing. The gun skitters out of his hand; he barely manages to keep a grip on the trench coat.

The ice spirit makes another abortive hand gesture, and a second, stronger blast slams into him. This one lifts him bodily off the ground. His feet sweep through empty air for a minute, up and around, and everything falls out of his pockets a moment before he himself lands hard on his shoulder.

He struggles up, floundering in the snow.

She's advancing, cold and white and merciless under the unblinking moon. There's no time to fight, no time to strategize—there's barely time to _breathe_ , in between the heavy blasts of snow and ice that surge up from the ground and toss him around as if he's a rag doll.

The barn. If he can get to the barn.

He backpedals frantically, trying to zigzag, and her approach changes—she stretches out one arm, flicking her wrist. A long ribbon of the air crystallizes, razor-sharp shards of ice whipping past his face to embed themselves in the snow beyond.

"Fuck," Dean gasps, as a bead of blood rolls down his scored cheek.

Another flick of her wrist—he throws himself at the ground, grunting in pain as the roll pulls on stiff joints that used to be supple. He struggles to his feet again, staring in dismay at the beautiful, spidery constructs of ice embedded in the snow right where he'd been standing.

She stops moving and stretches her arms out to the sides. Her hair flares out, taut like a halo of icicles, and _shit_ , whatever she's about to do next can't be good.

But he's in the doorway of the barn now. He lunges to the left, reaching for the edge of the open door. The wood is damp and rough in his hands; he heaves on the door, dragging it through the snow, falling backwards as he pulls it shut. He barely slams the latch through before the whole structure seems to shake with a heavy impact. The dim line of light between the door and its frame is blotted out. _Oh, fuck_.

He can hear the ice spirit prowling around outside, a noise like cracking glaciers and trees falling. More thuds land heavily against the walls of the barn. He stays crouched by the door, breathing as quietly as he can.

After a long, long few minutes, the sounds slowly fade, as if she's retreated. He unlocks the door and tries to open it. It doesn't budge when he pushes, and it isn't built to swing inwards.

 _Fuck_ , he thinks again.

He checks the pockets of his jacket frantically, but this only confirms what he already knew: everything—keys, wallet, both phones—fell out during the fight. Though somehow he's still holding onto the damn coat.

"Crap. Come _on_ ," he hisses, rotating in a circle to survey the inside of the barn. It's a dim, one-story structure, bare except for a couple of neatly stacked bales of straw scattered around the floor. A few windows high up on the walls, letting in bright silvery patches of moonlight, but thank god, there are glass panes in them and no snow has fallen through to the interior.

He considers the wall, wondering if he could break through—but no, it's sturdy wood planks, and there are no tools here that he can see, and he's not carrying the Mark and its venomous gift of strength anymore.

"Crap," he repeats. He's going to have to wait for Sam to realize he's not responding and come looking. At least he won't freeze—it's still balls-cold in here, but it's out of the wind, and if he walks around he can probably keep his body temperature high enough. Probably.

But Cas—Cas is still out there, somewhere. And the ice spirit—Dean thinks of the effortless way she'd dispatched him, how much power had answered to her slight frame. Would Cas have survived an encounter with that thing? Or maybe he's hurt, somewhere, or the spirit's keeping him prisoner, or maybe he's—

Dean realizes he's clenching the trench coat, knotting the beige fabric in his hands. He forces his fingers to loosen. Forces himself to take deep breaths. Sam's still out there. Sam can find Cas. If Cas even needs to be found, because they don't even know what happened, or why the idiot decided to wander out into the blizzard, but point is, nothing bad _necessarily_ happened, so there's still a good chance that Cas is just fine, right?

"You'd _better_ be fine," he mutters out loud.

It's at that moment that a rough, pained voice emerges from the darkness near the back of the barn.

"Dean?"


	2. Chapter 2

"Dean?"

Dean whips around so fast he can hear his spine creak. "Cas!" He scrambles over.

The angel is curled on his side behind a bale of straw, his tie askew, snow melting to slush in the cuffs of his sleeves. It's an odd position, one he's never seen Cas in—not that it's abnormal in and of itself, it's just strangely vulnerable, unguarded. It sends another small flutter of unease through his insides, overtaking the wash of relief that had welled up at the sound of Cas's voice.

"Dude, where you been? We've been looking all over." He puts a hand on Cas's shoulder, and the angel complies, rolling onto his back to blink up at Dean with solemn eyes.

Dean draws in a sharp breath of dismay. There's a blue, palm-sized patch of frost splashed across the front of Cas's throat, slick and shining like ice on a road after a freezing rain. Dark cobalt tendrils wind out from the stain, down towards the hollow of his throat, visible beneath the skin like engorged veins.

"What the—" Disconcerted, he reaches out to touch the mark.

"Don't," Cas murmurs, but doesn't make a move to stop Dean as he runs his fingers over the patch. It's slippery to the touch, though it's so cold that, like the powdery snow outside, it feels dry rather than wet.

"What the hell did she do to you?" His fingers are already numb from their brief contact with the...magical ice patch. He pulls back his hand, lets it brush briefly against Cas's shoulder.

Cas emits a low cough in the back of his throat. "Froze my grace," he rasps.

"What the...can she _do_ that?"

"Evidently."

Dean sighs. "Good to know your sarcasm's still intact, buddy."

Cas doesn't crack a smile, and the dismay settles in a hard lump in Dean's chest. "So what happens now that it's, uh, frozen?"

Another dull cough. "It seems to be...a sort of curse. It's functioning much as blood poisoning would for a human. The...infection, you might call it, is spreading throughout my grace, and will eventually contaminate all of it. Freezing my grace entirely."

That sounds bad. "And then?"

"...and then I will cease to function."

"What, like...you won't be able to control your vessel anymore?"

Cas doesn't answer. His eyes slide away from Dean's.

No.

No. No, that's ridiculous, because Cas can't die—not like this, not in a fucking barn, not from a fucking snowflake infection or whatever—that's preposterous.

"How long you got?" he hears himself ask, and it makes sense that his voice is perfectly calm, because—because it's not going to happen, of course. Cas is going to be fine. They're going to fix him up and he'll go back to being serious and confused all the time and texting people damn penguin emojis and standing too close and looking at Dean like he can see into his damn _soul_ —

"I don't know," says Cas softly. He looks up at Dean, his eyes very large and very blue. "It's progressing slowly. I was hit an hour ago—I think I startled her."

"You think you _startled_ —?"

Cas looks faintly embarrassed. "I saw her from the motel window," he says, "and she looked _lost_ , somehow, and so I tried to talk to her. But I think she thought I was—I mean, I think I seemed like a—a threat—" He breaks off with a long, low, rattling sound that's not quite a cough and not quite a breath, either.

"Alright, alright, so you startled Queen Elsa and she walloped you with ice magic. There must be a way to fix it, we just need to get out of here. How do we slow it down?"

"We can't," says Cas wearily. "The magic is targeting my grace, not my physical body. This—" he indicates the frost at his throat— "was just the entrance point."

"Bullshit." Dean's thinking very quickly now, forcing his mind to work in terms of tactics, solutions. He's certainly not going to picture Cas freezing to death, because that's not going to happen. "This thing's an ice monster, right? Everything it's done so far has been cold-related."

"I do feel cold," Cas allows. Given that he's shivering like a leaf, the admission isn't really surprising.

Dean nods. "Alright, can you sit up?" He untucks the coat from his arm. "Think you dropped this."

Cas grimaces, hauling himself slowly up onto his elbows. "She grabbed it. I slipped free and ran...the storm was heavy, I was lucky to find shelter."

Dean threads Cas's arms through the sleeves of the coat, one at a time. Tries to ignore how frigid Cas's hands are. Cas is going to be fine. Cas is a fucking angel, and angels don't fucking die of _cold_.

Cas is still rambling about the frigging ice spirit, too. "I don't think she intended to harm me, Dean. I think she was frightened, or lost, or—"

"Yeah. Right."

Cas shuts up and gives him a hurt look, which Dean chooses to ignore in favor of wrapping the coat snugly around his friend. Because _excuse_ him if he's not going to spare any sympathy for the thing that blasted them both into this situation. He smoothes one of the coat sleeves. Fuck, Cas really does feel cold, even through three layers of fabric.

Cas doesn't speak again and Dean, glancing at him, sees that Cas is watching Dean's hand slide down the coat sleeve. Dean's suddenly aware that he's still leaning over Cas, that his hand is moving too slowly for the gesture to really pass as perfunctory. _Shit_ , he thinks, because he's been doing that more and more, lately—letting himself slip up, letting his hands linger, scuffing at the fragile, impassable lines of their relationship.

Granted, there are times that he suspects Cas might actually be kind of on board with it—Dean comes up short in a lot of ways but he's not _blind_ —but—but then again—he might be wrong about that. Might be misreading things. Imagining, wishing. Because, after all, Dean doesn't have much to offer, does he, so what is there for an angel of the Lord to see in him? And even if Cas _is_ interested, it doesn't mean it would necessarily be a _good_ thing for him to—for them to—because Dean drags people down, he always has, and certainly Cas deserves better, because Cas is _Cas_ , and Dean is only—

And, anyway, there's so much other crap going on right now. What they need—what _healthy_ people would do, he thinks sardonically—is to sit down and talk about it. But there's never time, it seems, to do that—to sit down and talk about it. Or rather, if he's honest, there have been times, but the words have stuck in his cowardly throat, and it's been easier just to shoulder his way into the next fight, push everything else on ahead, into the sidelines of the future.

He clears his throat, gives Cas's arm one last little pat and removes his hand. "Uh, you should walk around, try to warm yourself up."

With glacial slowness, Cas struggles to his knees. However, when he tries to get a foot under himself he topples sideways. Dean barely catches him in time to keep him from banging his head into the barn floor. Cas is trembling minutely, and his face is contorted with pain, though there's no clear injury anywhere. Just the splash of magic attached to his throat, sending out its creeping veins. Dean thinks of John Laddon, shredded on the cellular level by his own crystallized insides, and his throat constricts with worry.

"S-sorry," Cas mutters hoarsely. "I just...I can't..."

"Okay, okay." Dean carefully settles Cas back against the straw. "Alright. It's fine. Just stay still. It's okay."

"S-sorry—"

"Shh. It's okay." He realizes that he's got a hand on Cas's forehead, that he's smoothing back Cas's hair. Hastily, he drops his arm. _Strike two_. Fuck, and he's usually so alert, too, usually so meticulously _careful_ about keeping off Cas, about keeping his touches cursory. But it's always like this—when Cas is hurt he can't stop himself, can't keep his traitorous hands in check.

Cas, for his part, now has one hand pressed against the side of Dean's knee—not even holding on, just occupying real estate against the rough weft of the denim. Dean fights the urge to clutch it in both of his. "Just hang on a minute, alright?"

He dismantles one of the neatly pressed bales of straw, spreading a layer on the dusty floor.

"Dean," Cas protests half-heartedly as Dean wordlessly slides his hands under Cas's arms, "there's no point—" But he doesn't resist as Dean hauls him over so that he's half-lying, half-sitting in the straw, his back to another bale. Dean piles the extra straw over Cas's legs and is relieved when Cas's shivers grow marginally less violent.

"Thanks for your cooperation," Dean says dryly, as he finishes.

Cas coughs. "All your efforts...will merely slow the effects. There's nothing you can do. Just...keep yourself warm."

What a self-sacrificing asshole. "So—what, you're just going to roll over and die, then?"

Cas scowls. Dean finds the familiarity of the expression somewhat comforting. Then again, it's about the only comforting thing in this scenario. He looks at Cas, studying him—Cas, who is white-faced and shivering under the moon, Cas who hasn't answered the question, who is still not quite meeting his eyes. Then around, at the dark and sturdy barn walls, the door through which not a single crack of light is passing.

"Not on my watch," he says to the angel.

***

Dean spends the next twenty minutes searching the barn, inch by inch, for a way out. He raps and hammers on the wooden walls, looks into the dark corners for tools. He stands by the snow-blocked door and hollers for Sam for a few minutes, for good measure. Nothing.

Cas watches his fruitless efforts through half-closed eyelids.

"Sam will find us," says Dean, not sure whether he's making the statement as a reassurance to Cas or himself. "He's probably already on his way."

"Mm," Cas agrees drowsily.

"You need to stay awake," Dean says for the third time. He's resorted to pacing back and forth between the square patches of moonlight, his hands tucked into his armpits. His breath makes silvery puffs in the frigid air and his toes are thoroughly chilled, and the admonition comes out sharper than he intended.

"I'm doing...my best," Cas says wearily.

"Well—good."

"You're angry."

Dean stops pacing. "I'm not," he insists.

"It's alright. You have a right to be angry. I've put you in danger."

"I'm _not_ angry. I'm just—I wish you hadn't run after it. Her. Whatever she is."

"I was only trying to—"

"Talk to her, I know. But Cas, she was a frigging monster, okay? I mean, what were you going to do, ask her politely to stop snowing on everything? You remember the poor bastard in the morgue—is that how you wanted to end up? She almost killed me. Look what she did to _you_. You've gotta be more careful."

Cas looks unconvinced, which, given the parasitic lump of ice currently eating away at his grace, is a little exasperating. "I still don't even know if she actually intended to harm me."

"She's a _monster_ , Cas!"

"You're being reckless with that label," says Cas. "Your stubbornness is unreasonable." And he actually sounds a little testy, which would exasperate Dean still further except that he takes it as a good sign that Cas has the energy to be irritated.

"No way do _you_ get to call me on recklessness, Cas, I've told you a million times that you can't trust monsters without—"

" _Dean_." Cas's voice rises; it's now underlain with something else that Dean can't quite identify. "It's not a black and white issue—"

"—that's not the point—"

"—and categorizing every strange being as a monster is an oversimplification—"

"What's to simplify? Cas, she's _not human_ —"

" _I'm_ not human, Dean!"

There's a brief pause.

"That's not—it's not the same," says Dean.

"Isn't it?" Cas rasps. His expression is suddenly ravaged. "I'm not a _person_ , Dean."

"What—of course you fucking are," Dean says fiercely. "Hell, you've _been_ human, in between being an angel."

"And I was terrible at it," says Cas with bitter amusement. "Hardly functional. And now I'm barely an angel."

"Cas—"

"I don't know _what_ I am, Dean. Something in between, maybe. Something less than either of those things. That's your definition of monster, isn't it? Something less than human?"

"Don't say that. You're—no." His throat closes up, clogged with words that never make it into the open air. _You're better than either of those things. Better than anyone I know._

Cas doesn't respond. Dean works his jaw in frustration, not knowing what to say. He's caught between wanting to apologize and wanting to drop to his knees and shake Cas by the shoulders, as if he can shake a better sense of self-worth into Cas, or at the very least shake away all the things he's done to hurt Cas. Or shake something loose inside _himself_ , maybe, so he can finally spit out all the things that crowd, heavy and unutterable, on his tongue.

His feet itch to carry him forward, but instead he whirls and starts pacing again, toward the far wall and back. When he finishes the lap, his hands aren't clenched into fists any longer, but Cas has bowed his head and is sitting motionless, his forehead pressed to his knees.

Dean stands before Cas, biting the inside of his lip. _I shouldn't have said that, about the monsters. I shouldn't have said any of it._ He always fucking forgets—even when Cas was fully-powered, it was so _easy_ for Dean to forget that he wasn't human. It's not that he isn't aware that Cas is an angel—hell, he can't _look_ at Cas without seeing the power and beauty and grace folded down into that familiar shape—it's just that with Cas, the two never seem mutually exclusive. Other angels are alien, strange, indifferent, _other_. Cas is different, Cas has _always_ been—family. Cas is celestial, yes, but he's also real, loyal, stubborn, true, warm—all those mortal, bounded qualities.

"You're Cas," he says finally. "Angel, human, whatever—you're just Cas, the rest of it doesn't matter. Cas, _listen_." He crouches and puts his hand on Cas's shoulder, squeezing insistently. Like maybe if he grips hard enough he can convey how much Cas means to him.

"I'm sorry, okay? You're right. Not everything that isn't human is evil. I get that. I do." He _does_ get it, regardless of how stubbornly he'd defended his stance earlier. Maybe once he didn't, but now—after Benny, after Garth, after Kate, after all the humans they've encountered who are so much worse than monsters—he does see the shades of grey, the interplay of darkness and light.

"I was overreacting, I'm sorry, I just—" He grits his teeth around the words, lays them out in the empty midnight air. "—she hurt you, Cas, I can't just brush that off and make nice—" _Not when you might fucking die and I can't even do a damn thing_ — "—but it's not because she's not human, it's not that I don't think she's a—a person, or whatever, it's because she hurt _you_ —"

There's cold pressure on the side of his thumb, where it rests on Cas's shoulder. Cas has lifted his own hand, the fingers stiff and curled like bent talons, and is pressing it against Dean's wrist. "Alright, Dean." It's a low, resigned murmur, almost a sigh.

"You don't sound alright," says Dean skeptically.

Cas finally raises his head. "I'm just so cold," he says. His voice cracks miserably. "Even when I was human, even in the rain, it was never this cold, it didn't, I never...even when _Lucifer_ —" He breaks off and curls more tightly in on himself.

Dean's heart twists. Before he can think too much about it, he sits cross-legged on the straw beside Cas, his back to the bale of hay, and pulls Cas towards him.

"D-Dean," says Cas, his teeth chattering. "Wait—"

"Shut up." Dean settles Cas so that the angel's back is to his chest. Cas is freezing. He feels like an marble statue in cloth. Dean grimaces and wraps his arms around Cas from behind.

"Dean, no," Cas objects again. "This w-will just make you colder." But at the same time he's pressing almost desperately  against Dean.

"Yeah, and it'll make you warmer."

"This is foolish. The temperature in this structure is...sufficiently high that you won't freeze to death...if you're sensible."

"Yeah, well." Dean reaches down and takes Cas's hands, closing his own hands over his friend's cold fingers. "When have I ever been sensible?"

And yeah, he can deny it all he likes, but the moment he has Cas's hands in his, it becomes pretty damn clear just how _much_ he's wanted to do that, for a long time. And—fuck, if he'd only _done_ something about it sooner—because of course the timing's all wrong now—they're trapped and freezing and Cas is maybe dying— _no, not dying, he'll be fine, he'll be fine_.

***

"Sorry," Cas mumbles a little while later, for the umpteenth time. "I know..." He attempts, unsuccessfully, to suppress a cough. He's leaning back against Dean's chest, his legs folded in front of him. He'd refused, with blistering insistence, to wear Dean's jacket, so Dean had settled for unzipping the thing halfway and settling Cas's head against his chest, pulling the edges of the jacket out so they cover Cas's icy ears.

They make a strange sight, he supposes—straw piled over their legs and clinging in clumps to their clasped hands, Dean still mostly upright, back settled against the bale of straw, and Cas slumped against him. If Dean dropped his chin he could rest it on the top of Cas's head. It's a tempting possibility, and he's working up a series of arguments as to how it'll definitely help keep the top of Cas's head warmer, but—in the end it's courage he needs more of, and not logic. He sighs inwardly; he could definitely use a drink.

Cas wrestles the cough into submission and starts again. "I know this must...be uncomfortable for you."

"It's not," says Dean, and it's an automatic reply, but it's also _true_ —yeah, his legs are both cramped _and_ freezing, and yeah, holding Cas is like holding a sculpture carved completely of ice, and yeah, Dean's starting to shiver harder even as Cas gradually grows more still, but—no, it's not uncomfortable. Not in the way that matters.

Cas sighs and is silent for a long moment before he whispers, "Why do...you keep coming back, Dean?"

"Coming back...?"

"I mean..." Cas shifts against him, his hair tickling the bottom of Dean's jaw. "I've caused more harm to...you and Sam...than any other foe you've faced, really."

Dean opens his mouth to contradict Cas, because first of all, that's not true (frigging _Azazel_ comes to mind, for starters), but Cas plows on, relentlessly, his words coming in short bursts between his slow and struggling breaths. Dean tries not to think too much about the breathing, because surely Cas shouldn't even _need_ to breathe, and yet— _no, no he's not going to die, not like this, no_.

"I've caused...thousands of deaths. Done things I can n...never atone for. Even...even if I'm not a monster by mere virtue of...not being human, I surely..." He coughs again, low and wretched. "...warrant the term all on my own."

"I don't care," says Dean, and maybe that makes him a bad person, or a hypocrite, but he _doesn't_. At this point Cas could be a fucking werewolf or a ghost or a shifter and Dean knows he wouldn't give a damn. "You're family."

Cas makes a sound that sounds a bit like a weak snort. "Family...so all that, earlier...about monsters, and it really just comes down to family, doesn't it. Bit of a...double standard."

"We're literally freezing to death, and you're going to try to logic me into calling you evil, is that it?" Dean tries to huff out a laugh, but he's too cold and the situation is too fucking far from humorous. "Cause I'm not, Cas. I'm not going to do it. Human, angel—whatever you are, you're one of the best I've ever met."

"Dean—"

"The best," Dean insists, ducks his head for a moment, catching a hint of the way Cas smells—pine, prairie wind, a cold stormy sort of smell. "Merry fucking Christmas."

" _Dean_ ," says Cas, despairingly. "I don't...deserve that."

"Then why do _you_ keep coming back?" Dean tugs the sleeves of his jacket forward to cover his fingers, and folds them more securely around Cas's. "You want to talk about harm, that's fine, but you gotta admit, Cas, I've been pretty damn shitty to you too."

Cas is silent for another moment, probably in order to process the long list of examples that support that statement. Finally he says, softly, "No. You're a good man, Dean—"

" _Bullshit_. I'm not. You saw—" His voice catches, but he makes himself go on. "—you saw what I did in Hell. What I became. And all the shit that came after is just more frosting for the cake."

Cas moves as if to try and face him, but it's a stiff, pained motion, and he ends up turned halfway, his cheek pressed against Dean's shirt, his next words muffled.

"I...have faith in you. I...from the first moment I saw you." There's a long pause, this time without a breath, and _that's_ even scarier, that lack of sound. "I've made...a lot of mistakes...but I...did that right. I did that thing right."

He doesn't sound like he's just making conversation, he sounds like—like he's fucking saying his last words, or something, and—

—it hits Dean in a low, ugly wave, a black truth with fangs and a grin—

—this is real—

—Cas is going to die, quite probably they're both going to die—

—but Cas is going to die _first_ , Dean's going to have to _watch him die_ —

"Cas," Dean blurts out, because he doesn't want Cas to finish, doesn't want him to keep going, maybe if there are things left unsaid then this won't happen, and yet there are also too damn many things left unsaid—

Cas lets out the tiniest sound, a low, thoughtful noise. "Sometimes...I think that's...the only...thing..."

He falls silent. Dean straightens in alarm. "Cas?"

He lets go of Cas's hands, leans forward to look at his friend. Cas's eyes are closed, delicate spirals and fractals of dark blue etched across his lower jaw like stubble. His lashes are fringed with ice.

"Cas," Dean says, shaking the angel by the arm. "Hey, buddy."

Cas stirs. His eyes open to slits, unfocused. "Sorry," he mumbles.

"You with me?"

"Mmm."

"C'mon, I need you to stay awake. Don't you fucking give up."

Cas moves a little, but only to slide further down onto his back, almost completely supine, his head lolling practically in Dean's lap. "I'm fine," he mumbles, the words slurred, almost inaudible.

"N-no, you're not," Dean hisses. Fuck, when did _his_ teeth start chattering? He slides down behind Cas, drapes his left arm over the angel, pulls him closer, so that his back is flush against Dean's torso, their legs bumping together under the straw's flimsy cover. Slides his right arm under Cas's neck.

" _Fuck_ , you're cold." He grimaces into the shoulder of the trench coat. There's no way this position can be mistaken for anything other than full-on spooning at this point, but— _well, end of the road, isn't it_ , some morbid part of his brain remarks dispassionately. On impulse, he presses his right hand over the front of Cas's throat, covering the ice spirit's patch of infection, ignoring the way it almost immediately seems to suck all the warmth out of his arm. He hears Cas draw in a stronger breath, making a noise of dismay even as he shuffles backwards, closer to Dean.

"Dean...no, it'll...it'll drain all the heat out of you." But his voice sounds clearer than it has in—hours? No, that can't be right, they can't have been here for hours. Dean scowls into the semi-darkness; his sense of time is disjointed, fraying at the edges.

"Dean," Cas protests again, weakly, when he doesn't get a response.

"Hush," says Dean. He closes his eyes, presses his face against Cas's shoulder. His hands are freezing. _Sam, you'd better fucking be on your way_. "Just hang on."


	3. Chapter 3

Sam rounds the back of the church and steps into the graveyard. It's a beautiful place, covered as it is now by the snow, the moonlight bathing everything in a cold white radiance. He treads carefully around the small statues and half-buried flowers, the depressions that indicate hollows beneath the surface.

He'd texted Dean ten minutes ago, though so far his phone hasn't chirped in response. He hopes his brother is having better luck than he is. Dean had been on edge as they split up, thrumming with an anxious worry that only family ever provoked in him. Sam, for his part, is apprehensive as well, but he isn't sure how concerned he should actually be. Cas can take care of himself, after all, and a snowstorm wouldn't pose the same problems for him as it would for a human. On the other hand, they still don't know what kind of being they're dealing with here.

And frankly, he thinks, wandering down between two rows of graves, it's _that_ particular piece of the situation, that quotient of the unknown, which is worrying him the most—

It's how she holds herself that gives it away. Something inhuman about the cant of her neck. Or maybe it's how a fine and frozen mist swirls around her, tiny flakes dancing through the air even though it's long since stopped snowing. Or the fact that there's no trail of footprints marking her path to the marble headstone on which she sits.

Sam comes to a halt, his hand going towards his hip.

She half-turns, her face in profile, and he sees that she's just a girl, really. Or wearing the shape of one. Fine-boned, slim, wearing ragged skinny jeans and a plain white tank top. Beneath the pearly translucence of her skin, tendrils of blue and black and grey writhe with languid, chilled motion. Her fingers, from the second knuckle onward, are the color of the Impala's tires.

He takes a step back, his heart lurching in a way that's a painful reminder that he's not really _young_ , not anymore.

She glances at the gun he has half-raised. "I won't hurt you." Her voice is soft, a child's voice, _normal_.

Sam doesn't lower the gun. "What are you?"

She doesn't answer, but she turns around to face him fully, and he recognizes her. She looks different from the pictures scattered around her family's home; her shoulder-length hair is the color of platinum now, her dark eyes flecked with silver. But the contours of her face, the shape of her nose, the serious twist of her mouth—still the same.

"You're Luna," he says.

She peers at him. It's disconcerting, seeing the entwined colors beneath her skin. The silver etched into her irises, like a scrawl of the moonlight. She's human and yet filled to the brim with something—else.

It's only once he registers just how _much_ her eyes are sparkling, sees the glint of the thin frozen tracks running down the sides of her face, that he realizes she's been crying.

She frowns in response to his statement. "Yes, I'm—Luna." The words come out uncertainly, but then she seems to decide something, for she nods and repeats in a stronger voice, "Yes, I'm Luna."

"And what are you?" Sam says again, warily. Because there's certainly no mistaking her for an ordinary human.

"I'm a freshman," she says defiantly.

Sam raises his eyebrows.

He can see her exhale, but there's no accompanying puff of her breath fogging the air. Ice crystals creep almost languidly over her shoulder and down her arm, springing up and then collapsing almost immediately into fine white powder. "I'm a frost channeler."

Well. That's a new one. "A frost channeler? Like a witch?"

"No," she says, bristling a little. "Witches bargain with demons for their power, don't they?"

It's more complicated than that, but Sam's nevertheless impressed that he isn't going to have to go through the whole _witches and demons and vampires are real_ spiel with her.

Luna hugs one knee against her chest and says, carefully, almost as if she's reciting something, "Channelers pledge themselves to an elemental force, and receive power to commune with and control that elemental force."

"An elemental..."

"The forest, the sky, the sun, the moon, the sea, the wind..."

"Right," says Sam, and he would be calling bullshit on that except that there's a girl growing ice out of her skin, sitting in front of him. "You're _fourteen_. How do you even know about this stuff?"

"I read a lot," she says, almost defiantly.

"And so...what, your family practices this...channeling?"

"No." She stares at him with her strange silver-streaked eyes. "They don't know. I did it by myself. There's a ritual."

Sam stares at her. For a moment he imagines her, brown-eyed and serious-faced, going through the steps of whatever arcane magic she somehow learned. Dabbling in things she doesn't understand, accessing forces that were never meant to be harnessed. He's seen it before, and it's a tragedy every time—the kid who's lonely, or who doesn't fit, or who's just too damn curious for their own good. Screwing up their lives, maybe forever, and for—what? For fun? For a laugh? Over some petty argument?

"I had to," she says, as if reading his thoughts.

Sam sighs, lowers the gun. _Fine, I'll bite_. Dean wouldn't care—Dean's more about present problems, future solutions, and not the messy tangle of the past. Then again, Dean's always had a soft spot for children, so maybe he _would_ sit and listen to this strange girl who's more than a girl. So maybe if Sam can get the whole story they can wrap this up painlessly, maybe it won't go south the way every _other_ magic-related case seems to go.

Which would be nice, for once.

"Alright, why, Luna?" There's another headstone just a few feet away, opposite the one she's perched on, and he brushes off the snow so that he can sit on the edge of it, leaning forward, bringing his eyes level with hers. "Why would you do that?"

She doesn't answer the question. Instead she looks down at her bare feet, stretching one leg out to drag her dark blue toes through the snow. "I think I hurt people," she whispers. "I didn't mean to, but the spirit—it's so _strong_ —"

"I know," says Sam carefully. "John Laddon, that was you, wasn't it?"

" _Laddon_ ," she spits, sudden venom in her voice. Her fingers clamp down on the edge of the gravestone, and ragged fans of ice erupt suddenly from the marble. "He deserved it. I'm glad I did it. I'm glad he's dead."

"He deserved to be murdered?" says Sam evenly. His hand tenses on the grip of his gun.

She looks up, teeth bared, her eyes—pupils, irises, schlera and all—flashing completely silver for a second. "He's an evil man."

"What did he do to you?"

She shakes her head, eyes normal again—well, silver-streaked still, but mostly normal—and unhappy. "Not me. Clare."

"Clare? What does she—" But Sam suddenly remembers the basketball trophies at the Nakahatas' house. If Luna's only a freshman—

"Clare played basketball," he realizes out loud. "In high school. Laddon was her coach."

Luna nods. "At school—people talked, they talk, about him. I didn't know if—I thought it was just rumors."

There's something ugly opening up in the pit of Sam's stomach, and part of him doesn't want to ask, doesn't want to find out. But he has to.

"Luna," he whispers, his mouth dry. "Did he..."

"He only _tried_ ," says Luna, and there's a sudden note of pride in her voice. "He _couldn't_ have—Clare didn't—she can fight—she can fight _anybody_ —" The worshipful look on her face is almost painful to see, in no small part because it reminds Sam heart-wrenchingly of how it had felt to look up to _his_ big brother—and yet Dean hadn't been indestructible, had he?

"She told Mom she fell." Luna touches the side of her face, and Sam watches as the swirling colors darken beneath her fingers, a black bruise, a void. "And—she was graduating, in a week, she was going away to college—but she made me promise not to try out for basketball—"

"And..." Sam falters, mostly because—well, what _can_ he say, to that—

"Clare wouldn't talk to me about it." Luna rocks on the gravestone, chin resting on her knee. "I had to figure it out—and the more I looked, the worse it was." She screws up her face, scowling.

"So you killed him."

"He deserved it," she hisses again. "He hurt her. Not just her. Lots of girls. They're not all Clare—they can't all fight back–"

"You could have told the school, the police, your—"

"They already know!" Frills of ice unfurl beneath her eyes, jagged shards bursting from the hollow spaces of her collarbones. " _Everyone_ knows—and they don't care—they'll never do _anything_ —"

Sam thinks of the people they'd interviewed, how they'd spoken of John Laddon, how they'd hesitated, how their murmured declarations of regret hadn't quite reached their eyes. That frisson of dislike. He'll have to dig deeper, he supposes, get proof, but in his gut he doesn't have any doubt that Luna is telling the truth.

So. People had suspected, and maybe they'd averted their eyes, pretended like everything was fine. And they'd done nothing. Because, in the end, Laddon had had money, influence, power. He must have thought himself untouchable. And clearly he'd been getting away with it, until Luna.

It was, he supposes, still murder, and he _ought_ not to feel pleased that the man is dead—that he _wasn't_ untouchable, in the end.

***

Dean wakes suddenly. His whole right arm is numb; he can't even tell where his hand is, let alone whether it's still on Cas's neck.

 _Cas_.

"Cas," he says. "Cas." There's no response. Dean props himself up on one elbow, bending his arm with difficulty, shivering violently. It's hard to push the word out; his tongue is clumsy and slow. "Cas."

On his back, Cas is terrifyingly still; he looks like a statue carved from grey-white stone. He's freezing to the touch. Dean rubs his left hand over his friend's heart, trying to generate some heat, but he knows his own body isn't offering much warmth anymore. His fingers are lifeless; he can barely feel the fabric beneath his palm.

"Cas," he tries again. _Don't be dead, don't be dead, don't you dare be anything but okay._

Finally, Cas opens his eyes. "Dean," he murmurs, barely audible. He turns his head a little. His hand creeps up to brush against Dean's, the fingers stiff, curled.

"Hey," says Dean, encouragingly. "Cas, c'mon, wake up."

"...tired," Cas whispers.

"I know, buddy, but you can't fall asleep."

"S'hard to...move..." Cas's jaw is rigid, his lips barely twitching, as if the magic freezing his grace is having the same effect on his vessel. His eyes are glassy, unfocused. In desperation, Dean presses his palm over the frost mark, but his hand is so cold that he can barely feel it. Cas's eyes are drifting closed again.

" _Cas_."

There's—something else, a last resort, something he'd learned to do as a child in the winters, to warm his gloveless hands, or his bare face, or his arms as he stood shivering in jackets that were too thin or too small to keep him warm. It's not something you do to other people, though. Not unless—

Cas's hand slips off Dean's, falls back down into the straw with a tiny, muffled thud.

 _Fuck_ , Dean thinks. Before he can deliberate too much about it, he leans down and presses his open mouth over the frost mark.

Cas snaps fully awake with a gasp, his whole body going taut, his hands flying up to catch at Dean's elbows. Dean exhales hard against Cas's throat, giving the last warm thing he can spare—his breath—ignoring the way the patch burns against his tongue, like he's licking a chunk of ice.

" _Dean_ —" Cas stutters.

Dean ignores him. He breathes out, against the unrelenting cold of the blue stain at Cas's throat. Cas exhales as well, a harsh, needy sound; beneath and around the ice, Dean can feel his throat working convulsively.

The frost mark sears him, cold fire seeping down into his lungs, but it's nothing compared to the electric terror of being this close to Cas, of having his lips pressed against Cas's throat. _What am I doing. What am I doing_.

He pulls back a hairsbreadth, just enough so that he can mutter against the underside of Cas's jaw. "I need you not to check out, man. I need you to stay with me." He closes his mouth back over the ice.

"Yes, Dean," Cas gasps, full-on clutching at Dean's arms now, fingers curled into the fabric of the jacket. "I'll stay. I'll stay. I'll stay—"

"You're not a monster," Dean whispers into Cas's throat.

He feels Cas shudder, soft noises of assent—"alright, Dean, I'm not, I'm an angel, I'm your—I'm—" vibrating from his throat. Despite the cold Dean grins a little— _so you believe me now, huh, Cas?_ —and seals his lips over the frost, breathes out with all his might. Cold coils down inside him like tar, making his thoughts foggy and slow. His vision blurs; he's too cold to even shiver. But he keeps talking, pulls back again to lick his numbed lips and whisper, "You're not evil. You're not broken."

"Dean," Cas starts to say, and his breath cracks and hitches as Dean runs his tongue over the blue stain. "Dean, _please_ —this will _kill_ you—"

"No, we're going to live, Cas." He breaks away for the last time, but keeps talking into the curve of Cas's neck. Trying not to think about what he's just done. Trying not to think about never getting to do it again. "We're going to survive, but only if you don't give up, you hear me? Only if you stay. With. Me."

Cas doesn't say anything, as he shivers in Dean's arms—a good sign, if shivering is the body's way of trying to warm up, right? But his eyes are fully open, now, his hands fisted in Dean's jacket, and he nods jerkily.

"Come on," Dean mutters. "Turn over."

Cas complies, slowly, his movements stiff. His breath hitches a little as he comes to rest on his side, his eyes flicking over Dean's face, his whole body trembling. Dean draws him in close, so that he can pull Cas's face against his shoulder, sling one arm over the angel. He presses Cas's curled hands against his chest.

"You with me?" he whispers into the cold silk of Cas's hair. He can feel Cas nod again, slowly.

"Good." Dean tightens his grip. He huffs breaths into his left palm until it feels warm instead of freezing, and presses it over Cas's throat.

***

Luna is looking away now, out across the silent graveyard. She twirls a strand of silver-blonde hair around her index finger. "Clare said I couldn't help. She said there was nothing I could do. But I knew—I knew there were ways, if I tried hard enough, if I wanted it enough—"

"You made a deal," Sam murmurs. And sure, so it wasn't a demon deal, but in the end it's the same, isn't it? Pacts for power, they all come at a price. "What did you give up, Luna?"

"Oh...me, I suppose." She stretches out her arms, slender and silver and blue in the night. "Channelers are consigned to their element, they're bound for the rest of their lives."

"Luna—" he says, horrified. God, she's just a kid. Just a kid who had to take something into her own hands because the system is so broken.

She's looking at him now, with eyes that flicker between very young and very ancient. "I'd do it again."

"You're fourteen, you're too—"

"What? Don't you have any siblings, mister?"

Yeah, he does, and—Sam thinks of what he would do for Dean, what he _has_ done for Dean, and what Dean's done for him—

"I've got a brother," he says. "Older brother."

"Did anybody ever hurt them?"

There's a whole long list of names to answer that question, but Sam suddenly thinks, then, of Alastair. Of how it had felt to crush the life, the essence, out of Alastair. He hadn't known, back then, what it was like to be in Hell. He hadn't _really_ known, except for Dean's quiet confession that afternoon on the hood of the Impala, what Alastair might have done to Dean, in Hell. (Later, after Lucifer, after the Cage, it would all become much clearer.) And yet—God, even not fully knowing, he'd still gotten such vicious satisfaction out of destroying Alastair, and it hadn't just been the power kick from the blood, the raw energy seeping through his veins. It'd been about vengeance, about destroying the thing that had dared touch his big brother.

"Yeah," he mutters. So maybe it's hypocritical for him to admonish her, but he has to do it anyway, because Sam knows, better than anyone, maybe, what it means to try to help, to lose yourself in your abilities, to ignore what you're becoming until you've already turned into it. "But, Luna, power like that—you can't let it control you."

"I didn't," she protests, but a guilty expression settles on her face. "I only—I didn't _mean_ to hurt anyone else, but the ice, there's so much of it, the spirit's too big." She looks down at her hands, her tar-black fingers. "And I—I think I got lost in it, like it wasn't just _me_ , I dunno—it's all hazy—everything kept happening so fast—everything I did made the storm _worse_ —"

"Who else did you kill?" says Sam, as the sinking feeling returns.

"No one! But, um—there was—there was a man, in the storm, in a coat, I think I hurt him." She falters, then blurts the rest out in a rush. "I didn't mean to—it just _happened_ , before I could stop. But then he ran away. So he _wasn't_ dead, I didn't kill him. And later there was someone else—and _he_ tried to _shoot_ me. But I didn't kill him either, okay? I'm not going to kill anyone else, I'm _not_."

"These men," says Sam faintly. "What did they look like?"

"I don't remember the first one. I wasn't looking, it was all—the storm, and the ice. I was—I could feel the cold all around me, it was part of me." She touches the base of her throat, frowning. "He had—I grabbed his coat."

"And the second?"

"Um—he was wearing a green jacket."

 _Dean_. Sam stands up. Luna doesn't flinch as he rises to his full height, but her body goes tense and her eyes glimmer just a little more silver.

"They're not dead," she says defiantly.

"Take me to them."


	4. Chapter 4

Dean jerks awake again to the sinking feeling that a lot of time has passed, and to a sudden void, to the emptiness of his own arms. His hands and feet are numb, but his core is warmer, the straw still piled over him, a scratchy but effective layer of insulation. He lifts his head, squints through the darkness. "Cas?"

Cas is lying motionless a few feet away, his back to Dean. His legs stretched out in Dean's direction. As if he'd dragged himself away on his belly.

"Cas." Dean struggles to his hands and knees, crawls over to the angel. There are beautiful slate-blue patterns etched over Cas's face, standing out starkly beneath the pale surface of his skin.

He shakes Cas frantically. "Wake up." _Wake up, you stubborn idiot_. He struggles to find a pulse, but his fingers are so leaden and clumsy that he can barely feel anything. And...not that he knows whether Cas would even have a pulse, now that he thinks about it. He tries the mouth-on-throat thing again, but it has little effect other than to further freeze his already nerveless lips. Cas still lies rigid on the ground, immobile, as if frozen solid.

_And then I will cease to function..._

No.

He wrenches the front of Cas's shirt open, stares in dismay at the dark tendrils spreading down from his collarbones, over his sternum and ribcage.

 _Fuck, no, you're not dead_ , he thinks. _You're not fucking dying on me, you're not_.

Painfully, inch by inch, he drags Cas back toward the straw, slowly covering them both with it again. It's slow work, made slower by his wooden fingers.

"You better not...crawl away again...asshole," he mutters, noting blearily that his own voice sounds slurred.

He does what he should have done hours ago, protests be damned, and yanks off his jacket, draping it over Cas. The cold blankets him, a merciless embrace, pervasive, all-consuming. Dean grits his teeth and gives himself a quick shake, trying to shove off the fog that's making his tongue and eyelids heavy. He slides down onto his side, face to face with Cas.

"Hey," he whispers. "Hey. If you can hear me, Cas, I need you to stay, okay? I need you to hang on." If he'd thought Cas was cold before—he's worse now, far worse, the bare planes of his skin like ice to the touch. Dean makes himself ignore the cold, hauls Cas even closer, holding the angel against him, trying to get into contact with as much of Cas's torso as possible. He tucks Cas's arms in close to his body, pulls Cas's head down against his shoulder.

"I need you." His lips brush against the curve of Cas's ear. It's like touching a curl of sculpted marble. "Angel or not. Human or not. Crazy or not."

There's no answer. But Cas is just unconscious, has to be just unconscious, or maybe he's paralyzed, incapacitated by the frost spirit's magic. There's no way he's _dead_ , there's no way Dean is talking to a corpse and not Cas.

He says it out loud. "You're not dead. You can't be dead, Cas, okay, I need, I need you to be alive."

No answer.

"Stay." He thinks he dozes off for a minute because time seems to stretch a little, from that word to the next. "Alive," he croaks, struggling to rouse himself.

 _Don't fall asleep. Don't fall asleep. Stay awake until...until.._. He struggles to remember what he's staying awake for. _Someone's coming_ , he thinks. Someone—he can't remember.

" _I'm_ staying, you dick," he mutters. He thinks he hears a sound from Cas, a faint noise like a gasp for breath, but he can't be sure. Encouraged anyway, he repeats himself. "That's right, I'm staying. So _you_ sure as hell don't get to clock out."

He stirs awake again, from a sleep he didn't know he'd slipped into. He doesn't know how much time has passed. It could have been a minute, an hour. "So you see, you can't die, alright? Because...because I _need_..."

Asleep. Awake. _Sam_ , he remembers. Sam's coming.

"Please, Cas." _Don't fall asleep._ "Just...stay. Please."

"I'm not going to let you go, alright? Not again."

The barn seems much darker now; he can't see Cas. Or maybe he's just going blind, maybe freezing to death does that to you, before the end. At least he feels a little warmer now. The drowsiness is rather pleasant, actually.

"Fuck, Cas. You're really going to make me say it? Like this? Here?"

"I love you, alright?" He laces his fingers through Cas's. Buries his face in Cas's cold hair. "You fucking son of a bitch. Don't you fucking go anywhere. Okay? Okay?"

No response, and he sighs into the empty, frigid air and lets the darkness have its way. It closes around him once more, this time with an air of finality, and he hangs onto Cas with all his might as he sinks.

***

Various items from Dean's pockets are scattered in the snow outside the dark and silent barn. Sam stoops to gather them up. When he straightens, it's to see Luna clearing the massive pile-up of snow from the barn door with an imperious gesture of her hand.

It's a lot of power, and if Sam weren't so worried about Dean and Cas he'd be more focused on whether Luna is actually going to be able to control it, whether she'll actually keep a clear head, whether she'll actually be able to keep her word bout not hurting anybody else. As it is, he says nothing as he steps past her and wrenches the door open.

The interior of the barn is dark, the moon having risen out of view of the high-set windows. But Luna lifts a hand, and the air seems to shift, dozens of tiny crystals rotating and refracting light, focusing a silver circle of radiance on a point near the back of the structure.

Sam rushes forward, falling to his knees beside the still forms. Dean has his arms wrapped so tightly around Cas that Sam can't get a glimpse of the angel's face. Dean's face, though, is grey and still, his lips and ears blue, his eyebrows white with frost.

Sam's heart stops. "Dean," he says. He grabs his brother's shoulder— _fuck_ , Dean is ice-cold—and rolls him over onto his back, wrestling Cas out of his grip. Cas is—stiff and even colder, if possible, to the touch, his skin spangled with frost. His shirt falls open as Sam turns him over onto his back, revealing tendrils of dark blue inlaid just beneath the skin, tendrils that wind across his chest and stomach, nearly to his navel.

"Oh, God," says Sam. Frantically, he feels the side of Dean's neck and then switches to his wrist, searching for a pulse. "What did you do, Luna, what did you _do_ —"

"I didn't know—" the girl protests. She sounds stricken. Sam barely hears her. He gives up on the pulse, sits back on his heels. He can't make himself let go of Dean's wrist. His heart is hammering.

"Fix them," he says to Luna.

She hesitates. "I don't—"

He doesn't care that she's fourteen and scared, doesn't care that she can't control the powers she's welded herself to. "Fix. THEM."

Irritation flashes in Luna's eyes for a moment; she juts her chin out, and he feels a rippling chill as her anger sends hoarfrost creeping over the sleeve of his jacket. But then she glances down at the two bodies on the floor and her expression goes contrite, instead. She kneels in the straw beside Cas, and reaches out with those withered black fingers to touch the angel's throat, pressing lightly on the midnight-blue patch of ice that clings to it like lichen.

Under her touch, the dark tendrils retract, withdrawing along Cas's body into the ice stain, and then that, too, shrinks into nothing. There's a long, agonizingly empty moment, and just when Sam's heart is about to resume its downward journey into his toes, Cas opens his eyes and draws in a sharp breath. His limbs suddenly relax, as if they'd been held rigid by some immobilizing force.

"Cas," Sam exclaims, relieved. He reaches out, but in that instant Cas's eyes fly wide.

"DEAN!" The angel sits bolt upright, twisting onto his knees, reaching out. Sam pulls back, startled, and the next thing he knows Cas is hauling Dean into a half-reclining position, all but cradling him in his arms.

Sam hangs onto Dean's icy hand, says urgently, "Cas, he's not breathing, I can't find a pulse—"

But Cas already has his hands pressed to either side of Dean's face, is staring desperately at Dean's closed eyes and slack expression of repose.

" _Cas_ ," Sam tries again, and Cas doesn't spare him a glance, but he does rasp, "I'm trying, Sam, I'm trying. Dean, Dean, _please_ —"

There's intense concentration on his face, an ironclad look of determination. And something more, a frantic terror. The skin beneath his palms begins to sear with a bright burn of light.

Sam makes himself let go of his brother's hand, makes himself stand up, makes himself trust Cas to do this, to beat this. Because if Cas can't—if he can't—

 _No. He will_. Because Dean just has severe hypothermia, that's all, that's why Sam couldn't find a pulse, that's all—

There's more going on here, questions he doesn't yet know the answers to—what the fuck Luna had done, how she was able to do it to an _angel_ , how Dean had ended up lying curled so tightly against Cas, why Cas is practically in tears now, whispering over and over, "I'm not going anywhere, I'm not going to clock out, Dean, I need you too, I need, I love, I love—"

And Dean jerks awake with a gasp, color rushing back into his face, a name bursting from his lips.

"Dean," Cas chokes back in response, and bows his head.

Sam, sagging in relief, catches a glimpse of Luna slipping out the barn door. He looks back at his brother. Dean's face is obscured by Cas's shaking shoulders, but one of his arms comes up and crooks around the back of Cas's neck.

"Sam found us," Cas is saying. "Sam found us, you were right, you were right—you made me stay—"

"Damn right I did," Dean croaks. He moves his head, catches Sam's eye, smiles weakly. "Thanks for taking your sweet time, bitch."

"Hey, I saved _both_ your asses, jerk," says Sam, managing to keep his voice from cracking. Relief is making him weak-limbed; he thinks if he keeps looking at Dean's healthy, frostbite-free face and remembering what it looked like a few seconds ago, he'll simply fold at the knees and break down on the barn floor. And—well—he looks at Cas, whose head is still lowered, but who has one hand raised to his own face, to where Dean's palm is pressed against it—whose trench coat is creasing from how hard Dean is gripping the fabric—the barn floor is already contending with enough emotion, right now.

Outside, he finds Luna leaning against the barn wall.  Sam studies her and sees that the dark blue and grey tones of her skin have faded; now she merely looks severely bruised, and not carved completely from moonstones and marble and lapis lazuli.

"Thanks for saving them," he says begrudgingly.

Luna reads the message between the lines. "I'm sorry I hurt them," she says. "I didn't mean to, I promise."

Sam nods, lets it go. Pushes down the memory of Dean's blackening lips. "What are you going to do now?" he asks her.

She spreads her hands, studies them. "I'll go back to my family. I think it's contained, now. I'll look normal by the time I get home. Mostly normal."

Sam chews his bottom lip. "Luna..." he starts reluctantly.

She turns earnest eyes on him. "I won't hurt anyone else," she says. "I swear. I'll be careful."

Sam knows he ought to be drawing some line somewhere, something about murder and justice and right and wrong. But he looks at her, standing there with her bony shoulders and her silvery eyes that still manage to look earnest, and nothing comes to mind.

"Your brother," says Luna, "he wouldn't understand."

"No," Sam allows, because for Dean the world has always been a little more black and white. "How did you know he was my..."

She crooks a smile. "I could tell."

Sam nods, accepting that. Luna shoves her hands into the pockets of her jeans. "Guess I should go before they come out, then."

"Take care of yourself, Luna." Sam lets his worry spill out across his face, because he wants her to see that he does care, that he wants to help. "I'll keep in touch, okay?"

"I'll be fine," she says, but she doesn't say it like a refusal. She starts off across the snow, leaving no footprints behind.

Sam watches her go. By the time footsteps sound out behind him, she's long since vanished into the monochrome ripples of the landscape.

"Thank you for finding us, Sam." It's Cas, straight-backed and solemn in the barn doorway, relief written all over his face. He's supporting an unsteady Dean with one arm, like Dean weighs nothing—and maybe he doesn't, to an angel.

"Dean, are you okay?" Not that Sam doesn't trust Cas to do a healing right—but this is _Dean_ he'd just seen, lying black and blue and frost-rimed on a barn floor, so he has to ask, anyway.

"I've been—" Dean glances at Cas, such a quick and hesitant motion Sam almost misses it. "—never better," he finishes. "And the ice spirit, did you—did you find it?"

"The girl, who was she?" Cas asks at nearly the same time, squinting out across the frozen landscape.

"I'll tell you about it later," Sam promises. He shoves his cold hands into his pockets, smiles at Cas. "We're finished here, though. We can head back in the morning."

Yeah, there's more to do—he'll need to check on Luna again, definitely, and set up some kind of schedule so they can _keep_ checking on her. She's just a kid, after all, and powers—well, they're tough, Sam ought to know.

But then—Sam also just wants to get _home_ , wants to get back to the Bunker so he can pile blankets on Dean and make Cas put on a sweater, and heat soup on the stove while Dean gripes about how he's doing it wrong, and just—just make sure, _really_ sure, that they're okay.

"What do you know," Dean says, cracking a smile. He has one hand lifted, clasping Cas's wrist where the angel's arm lies draped across his shoulders. "Home for the holidays."

Sam eyes them, the way they're standing, the way their bodies are angled. The way their hands curve almost unconsciously toward and around each other. He catches Dean's eye and Dean's smile doesn't falter.

 _I'll tell you about it later_ , Dean's gaze is echoing, and in spite of all the seesawing worry and relief of the last couple of hours Sam suddenly grins, _has_ to grin, from the explosion of warmth inside his chest.

Yeah, they're going to be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed reading! Feedback and comments are always appreciated, and I'd especially love to know what you thought of Luna's character!

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed reading! Feedback and comments are always appreciated, and I'd especially love to know what you thought of Luna's character!


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